| Ignoring the obvious Bush said yesterday that "The market is not functioning properly." and that if the government doesn't intervene more banks could fail, the stock market would drop even more, the value of homes would plummet and foreclosures would rise dramatically.
So he's for free, unregulated markets, but not against the federal government subsidizing mistakes the market makes.
Some say this bailout signals the collapse of free-market ideology. Huffington Post's Jared Bernstein wrote a few days ago that while banks have always resisted regulation, they are "perfectly happy to dump toxic debt on the government".
The Mackinac Center's past president Larry Reed isn't taking this kind of talk laying down. He downplays the bailout as small potatoes: "Thank God we have the private sector to bail out the federal government not just last week, but every week!" This, he says, is because when companies pay taxes, they bail out the government.
That's the free-market crowds response so far. I'm sure, given a little more prep time, they come up with something better than that. |
